Final Installment
My first two years out of Hebrew Union College, I was a Hillel rabbi. On the campus I served, the affiliated membership of the Jewish Student Center was approximately 100 students, each of whom had paid (or whose parents had paid) a $30 membership fee. In the main, these students were engaged and committed and took pride in their affiliation and involvement; the most dedicated among them could not imagine why the rest of the Jews on campus didn’t participate in the activities Hillel offered. In contrast, the students who were not on the Hillel’s rolls (a number estimated at more than 1000) knew one thing clearly: they were not members of Hillel. Their reasons varied, but the reality remained; there were those who were “in” and those who were “out” and the dividing line was whether they had quite literally paid their dues.
What to do? The old formula had always been to program harder, to make the programs more relevant, exciting, attractive. On campus this meant watering down the Jewish content and appealing to the most prurient interests (ie. louder music, looser morals, and always more alcohol). And the result? Zero uptick in members, just more mess to clean up once the party ended. In congregational life we know the drill. Substitute “Shabbat Unplugged” and “Torah & Tonic” for rock music and a keg of beer and you have a congregation’s answer to the problem we had on campus fifteen years ago. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I determined to try a different tack. I suggested to our board that we disband the notion of membership as it had been heretofore understood and replace it with a new model. I determined to define Hillel as synonymous with the entire Jewish community on campus. My goal was simple: to deny any one the ability to claim that for not having paid membership dues he or she was “not a member of Hillel.” After all, if being Jewish was what defined membership rather than having paid a fee, then we instantly expanded our roster and now had a first-ever opportunity to engage those who had never participated in campus Jewish life before. (And the $3000 in lost dues? To replace these monies, I appealed to alumni and parents, and more than made up the lost revenue.)
The results were not noticeable overnight. Changing culture is hard. But with a constant push to engage and involve Jewish students wherever they were to be found – in student government, campus organizations, athletic departments, residential life, the proverbial woodwork – and by programming in response to their interests, working together we slowly began to change the perception of what it meant to be a Jew on campus. Simultaneously, we sought to educate our funders as to our new goal: Not measuring success by how many “members” we had, but reaching and touching more Jewish souls.
Our congregations demand the same counter-intuitive conversation vis-à-vis our own membership challenges. And it has begun. The discussion underway in some of our congregations about voluntary dues structures invites it; the notion that High Holy Day services should be ticketless and open to all reflects this felt need; a new willingness to offer membership as a wedding gift to couples who come seeking (and are willing to pay for) a wedding or a funeral gives evidence of this new paradigm. The fact that we admire Chabad’s ability to ingratiate themselves among so many of the “unaffiliated,” and indeed even among our own “members,” for their willingness to accept folks where they are (even as we may resent their disrespect for our principles), bespeaks a new normal.
I concede that by and large our congregations do not exist within the bucolic confines of a college campus, what with its captive audience and vast alumni and parent networks eager to support vulnerable students. And I acknowledge that overturning an economic model that is our very lifeblood is a perilous thought. But as we confront the altogether new paradigm of a post-modern, 21st Century Judaism, at a time when too many of our congregations are contracting and we are fighting among ourselves for a shrinking pool of would-be members/donors, clearly new thinking about our congregation’s core mission is required.
